1. Field
The subject matter disclosed herein relates to a method and apparatus for preventing certain erase operations in electrically writable devices.
2. Information
Nonvolatile memory devices, such as Phase-Change Memory (“PCM”), flash memory, or Electrically Erasable Programmable Read-Only Memory (“EEPROM”) are sometimes packaged within an electrical system. For example, such nonvolatile memory devices may be sold within a computer system or a digital camera, for example. Such nonvolatile memory devices may store data or other information in various memory blocks. The first time that a nonvolatile memory device is used, its memory blocks may be empty such that data may be written to one or more sectors of such memory blocks. However, a situation may arise when data is to be written to a sector of a memory block to which data has previously been written. Even if data is only to be written to one sector of a memory block, it may be necessary to completely erase all sectors of such a memory block prior to writing data to such the one sector.